It’s the easiest thing in the world to get stuck in a rut, we’ve all done it. Practicing bad habits over a period of weeks, months and even years, then we wake up one day and think how did this happen to me? how did my life become like this? it’s not how I intended it to be, it’s not how I intended to be at all.

We all had fantastic dreams when we were kids, we wanted to be all manner of things; astronauts, football players, models, actors.

Then we hit adolescenece and we started to think differently, by this time we’d been sufficiently conditioned by society to think small, to be sensible and to accept our lot.

Why should we limit ourselves?

Why shouldn’t we think big and if we’ve done things we regret or not been a very nice person we CAN change it, we can set the record straight not just for other people but for ourselves.

Jim Rohn, the legendary personal development specialist once said “Work hard at your job and you will make a living, work hard on yourself and you will make a fortune”.

How true this is, even a little time spent working on ourselves will yield rewards, just admitting that we should strive to improve ourselves is a major acheivement.

I’ve always said that a total life transformation takes about five years but as soon as a person begins working on themselves they will see changes immediately and not just small ones either. But habits both good and bad are hard-wired into our brains so if we want to change them we have to be prepared to be persistent.

When we are looking for a starting point for how we can improve our lives the best place is with the concepts of COMPROMISE and EMPATHY.

If we can make ourselves just 10% easier to deal with both in our business and personal lives then our world’s will take on a much happier complexion. Once people realise that we are making more of an effort with them they will reciprocate it, often to a much greater degree.

We are by nature very impressionable so the company we keep is vital, we should strive to get good people around us – our own personal support group and avoid NEGATIVE people at all costs. Negative people are like parasites they feed off and sap other people’s energy.

Many famous people have turned their lives around so I recommend delving into biography.com occasionally to see how the did it.

There is good and bad in everyone, thus it is vital that we are not too harsh on ourselves and we make our personal development goals small and achievable.

We are our own masters, we are free thinkers, we can be whatever we want to be.

One of my friends came up with this question recently and at first I thought he was joking, I’ve always been an advocate of locking up criminals, so much so that I had never even considered the alternatives before.

His comments got me thinking.

Would our society simply descend into chaos if the prison service was abolished?

Maybe it would, like I said I’d never considered the whys and wherefors of the subject before.

Not until now.

Fortunately, I’ve never been in prison, so I DON’T know what it’s like. However, I do know enough about prison to know that it’s no walk in the park.

So why do people re offend?

Personally, I don’t think we will ever live in a perfect society and we will always need some kind of penal system, but that’s just my view. What if prisons WERE abolished tomorrow, how else could we deal with offenders?

Here are a list of suggestions, some of them are already in use:

Community programmes
counselling
Instant punishments
public embarrassment
Fines
Rehabilitation programmes
Private punishments
In-work punishments
Incentives
Further education
Mentors
Second chance programmes
Prevention rather than cure
More school awareness
Public understanding

There is certainly a culture in all prisons and some people prefer it to living on the outside. Obviously part of it is institutinalisation but there has got to be more to it than that.

Prisons can offer a sense of importance to people who could not acheive success in normal life. Comradeship, prisoners can form strong family-like bonds with each other.

Does prison stop people re offending?

Statistics show that 65% of all prisoners re offend within 2 years of release.

Look at it another way only 35% of people going through the prison system are rehabillitated.

You can make figures say anthing you like but I am sure we can improve on a two thirds re offence rate.

How can we improve it?

The re conviction rate for people given community service is roughly the reverse of those given custodial sentences, so this has got to be extended for less serious crimes.

Maybe we should give prison and prisoners a lot more understanding, I believe there is good and bad in all of us and everyone deserves a second chance.

Serious offenders need more consideration and at a cost of £40,000 per annum to the tax payer for a standard prisoner maybe serial murderers and rapists should be dealt with differently.

There has got to be more education in schools about crime and it’s consequences. If our kids were given better guidance in the first place then the chances of them getting into trouble would be greatly reduced.

We as parents must take more RESPONSIBILITY.

At times we are all just too judgemental. The phrase “There but for the grace of god go I.” has passed most of our lips at one time or another.

The one thing that considering this subject has taught me is that we should all stop adopting the moral high gound, stop sweeping this subject under the carpet and put more of our energies into solving the inadequecies of the prison system.

I’m not talking about going soft on criminals, just the opposite, I come from a disciplined background.

If we really want to affect something we have to monitor it, give it care and attention and then we might just have a chance of changing it.